PFF sees Chargers as Super Bowl LIII contenders

The Chargers are finally receiving praise as one of the most promising teams in football due to their bolstered roster heading into the 2018 season. For Pro Football Focus, they see Los Angeles as legitimate Super Bowl LIII contenders.

L.A. went 9-7 and easily could have gone 12-4 in 2017. While it was a longshot, they were much better than the record indicated. The Chargers played great and gave every team a run for its money but could not come out on the good end of kicking woes or just plain luck.

The Bolts matched up toe-to-toe with every team in the playoffs and even could have given the Patriots a run for their money if they were awarded a rematch in the postseason.

The upcoming campaign has become one full of high anticipation for Charger fans. Building off of last year, the limit for this team is sky high. This is the best roster that the Bolts have seen in years.

On the offensive side of the ball, Los Angeles will get several playmakers back on offense, including quarterback Philip Rivers, wide receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, running backs Melvin Gordon and Austin Ekeler, the second-round selection from 2017, offensive guard Forrest Lamp, and the newest member in the trenches, center Mike Pouncey.

Here is what PFF had to say about Rivers’ supporting cast.

The real improvement in 2018 has to come on the other side of the ball though, as the main reasons they only went 9-7 lie on offense. Most egregiously along the offensive line. The Chargers line was and has been terrible. There’s no sugar coating it. Despite giving up the fewest sacks in the NFL (a very quarterback driven stat), the Chargers ranked 25thin pass-blocking and 27thin run-blocking. In fact, the Chargers haven’t had an above average pass-blocking offensive line since 2007. That’s a whole decade of ineptitude.

There’s good reason to believe though that for the first time since that ’07 season that things could turn around. They signed center Mike Pouncey who, while overpaid for how he’s graded of late, was still a massive upgrade as PFF’s 14th–highest graded pass-blocking center last year. 2017 second-rounder Forrest Lamp returns to fill one of the guard positions as well.

On the other side of the football, the defense is what kept the team close in the contest. The Chargers have all of their defensive starters locked in with the addition of their 2018 NFL draft selections safety Derwin James, edge rusher Uchenna Nwosu, defensive tackle Justin Jones, and linebacker Kyzir White.

Here is what PFF had to say about defensive coordinator Gus Bradley’s defense.

The combination of a deadly pass-rush and a secondary bereft of weak spots is a nightmare for opposing quarterbacks. That’s especially true in Gus Bradley’s Cover-3 defense that allows his defenders to play incredibly fast because they’re executing the same role play after play. Last season, the Chargers ran Cover-3 on 55.6 percent of their passing snaps a season ago, the highest rate in the NFL.

Don’t expect that to change now with the addition of safety Derwin James. The Florida State product was the sixth-highest graded Power-5 safety in run defense and highest graded in coverage a season ago. The man was born to play the box safety role in Bradley’s defense. James was the No. 5 player on PFF’s Big Board, and the type of talent that could step in and play at a Pro Bowl level from Day 1. It could even be a better defense than the one that allowed all of 17.0 points per game a season ago.

With the most complete roster that the team has fielded in nearly 25 years and mounting belief in tow, the Chargers are not only making believers out of PFF, but they’ve appeared within the top 12 to six of ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) and several other major publication’s power rankings as well. But for any of that to matter, the Bolts must do what they’ve never done as a franchise, and that’s to find a way to seal the deal when it matters most in February.

But just one year after the Eagles got off the Super Bowl schnide themselves, the proverbial stars do seem to be aligning for the Bolts in 2018.